Recently, with the advance of information and communication industries, research and development of biometrics for identifying a target person have been actively conducted. Biometrics includes methods of using physical characteristics, such as iris, finger print, and DNA, and methods of behavioral characteristics, such as signature, voice, and gait. Meanwhile, even in the case of crops, procedures for securing the rights of developed varieties have become important through the strengthening of intellectual property rights or the like, and thus there has been a desperate need for variety identification technologies, such as personal identification cards.
For the identification of crop varieties, methods of classifying varieties using the morphological characteristics of plants, such as grass type, leaf shape, and grain size, based on the expertise and experience of breeders have been generally used. However, since the morphological characteristics thereof are greatly influenced by environmental changes, such as climate changes, recently, variety identification technologies using DNA markers having no influence on environment, such as simple sequence repeats (SSR) and sequence tagged sites (STS), have been developed. However, these variety identification technologies are problematic in that it is difficult to classify the recurrent parent varieties having high genetic similarity, like qualities bred by backcross, and in that these technologies have limitations in the usage of quality identification technologies because a small number of markers are used.
In order to overcome such problems, recently, technologies for identifying a variety at a genetic level using next-generation sequencing (NGS) have been developed. However, these technologies using NGS are disadvantageous in that high cost and much time are required. Therefore, it is extremely necessary that a variety identification system that can be performed at a general laboratory level be developed.
In the related art, Korean Patent Registration No. 10-0426467 discloses an encoding method for identifying the variety of crops. However, in this method, only two-digit numerical codes for identifying rice varieties are given, and a system for selecting an indel marker for variety identification and encoding the amplification result thereof is not disclosed. Therefore, it is still difficult to classify varieties having high genetic similarity, such as backcrossed varieties.
Further, Korean Unexamined Patent Publication No. 10-2013-0010172 discloses a method of identifying lettuce varieties using a microsatellite primer set. However, in this method, a system for selecting an indel marker for variety identification and encoding the indel marker to express the result thereof in a two-dimensional manner. Therefore, it is still difficult to identify the lettuce varieties at a glance.